Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Ivy

2 hours writing, 2 hours reading, 2.5 hours meeting, page count = 133

Went to Princeton for a seminar on insecurity and democratic stability in Central America, and to meet with a professor who's starting a new project on the police. It's a pleasant 80-minute train ride from Manhattan - good for getting reading done. The last 5 minutes are on a one-car train called the "Dinky," the sole purpose of which is to go the two miles from Princeton Junction station to the Princeton campus. It's adorable. There was a farmer's market on campus, very cute. The seminar was very interesting - bottom line, El Salvador and Guatemala are in a world of hurt, while Nicaraguans report higher levels of institutional trust and lower levels of vulnerability to crime than you would expect. And my meeting with Deborah Yashar, who graduated from my program 10 years ago, was terrific. She had lots of concrete advice and asked the right questions. I'll look forward to visiting again later in the fall.

In terms of writing, I went through the manuscript and gathered all the crumbs I had left myself over the past week as to items on which I need to follow up, and evidence I need to gather. Those are all in one big list, which means I can start cutting away at that list. I also prepared a one-page summary for a professor - from Princeton, actually, but currently on sabbatical in Spain - with whom I'll be speaking tomorrow. After a couple of attempts, I was able to connect by phone just now with John Bailey, one of the leading scholars on the police in Latin America. Couldn't be a nicer guy, and pointed me in some very useful directions.

In terms of reading, I took a further look at another critical-juncture argument I need to incorporate into my discussion, and begain reading a recent collection on civil-military relations in Latin America. It's amazing how quickly things change; this collection from 2001 aims to bridge the civil-military relations literature with current methodological thinking in political science, but just a few years later, it feels a little out of date. (That assessment may change as I read more of the articles.) What's changed is the growth of formal modeling and multi-method work in comparative politics. It's good to know I can make a contribution.

3 comments:

Rjewell40 said...

At what point is something a "manuscript" vs a "draft" or ...?

I'm just wondering.
:)
Way to go. Good progress.

Laura Sumner said...

Excellent work! Although you are below time on writing and reading, I think your meetings make up for it. Sounds like you are meeting some great contacts.

Chris said...

Thanks!

For a while, I was calling the big document an "outline," since that was how it started. But as it's grown and I've written things out that were once little more than bullet points, it's become a different beast. So a couple of weeks ago I relabeled the file "manuscript." It's composed of chapters that are in different stages of advancement, in different drafts....